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Innovation: It’s happening on the high street as well as in the laboratory

Jennifer Thomas.

The FSB’s Jennifer Thomas highlights a new campaign calling on small businesses to meet the challenge of new technology.

Published in association with

START-UPS and small businesses are often quick to embrace new ideas, driving economic change while competing with larger, established companies. Businesses in Northamptonshire are no different and now is the time to focus on innovation to strengthen our local small businesses and supply chains.  

‘Innovation’ is often misunderstood as being synonymous with ‘invention’, confined mainly to the tech sector, but it should be thought of more as ‘improvement’, especially given the challenges which businesses are facing at the moment. 

While creating new products is an important part of innovation, equal value must be placed on businesses that enhance existing products, successfully integrate technology or modernise production processes.

Only six years ago, I was running FSB workshops across the county with Clare Elsby, FSB volunteer and co-founder of Northamptonshire accountancy firm Elsby & Co, encouraging small businesses to consider using the cloud and apps to run their business – quite a novel suggestion to many at the time. 

Now, digital and tech adoption is essential for almost all businesses that need to stay competitive and overcome other issues such as cost increases and staff and skills challenges. And Clare has become the FSB’s national innovation policy champion.

Clare Elsby.

Innovation does not just happen in labs. It is happening on local high streets too. Think of the local hair salon that boosts customer engagement through virtual consultations, the small manufacturer that increases production with an automatic bottling machine or the small firm using AI for marketing, customer communications or chasing overdue payments.

Despite their agility, resilience and innovation, small businesses face significant barriers to adopting new technology, from lack of capital and late payment to difficulties in understanding how to implement tech solutions. 

It is no secret that small businesses have fewer resources and thinner margins compared to large corporations. Many of our county’s biggest businesses not only started as small businesses but also rely on SMEs right through their supply chain, with the real power to make a difference. So sharing knowledge and raising up their smaller supply chain businesses should be encouraged and viewed as an investment. 

Despite making up 99% of Northamptonshire’s and the UK’s business population, small businesses receive a relatively small share of government innovation funding compared to larger corporates. The FSB continues to urge the government to empower small businesses by ensuring access to the funding they need to become more digital-savvy, sustainable and efficient.

However, funding alone is not enough to create the infrastructure necessary for fostering tech adoption and innovation in small businesses. Policymakers need a broader understanding – one that goes beyond trying to make the UK the next Silicon Valley and instead focuses on creating a supportive environment for all businesses. 

That is also why the FSB’s business support and lobbying work in Northamptonshire focuses on levelling the playing field for small businesses, enabling them to support one another and to ‘work smarter, not harder’.   

I am involved in the annual Leicestershire Innovation Festival, where the vision is to raise the county’s GVA to 5% above the national average. It has struck me that, with a similar number of businesses in Northamptonshire and roughly the same number of FSB members (around 2,000 in each county), there is huge opportunity to encourage business innovation in a similar way over the border. 

I am therefore pleased to be involved in the University of Northampton’s work to kick off this drive and map the ‘Innovation ecosystem’ in Northamptonshire, which aims to set the benchmark and pinpoint our county’s strengths, resources and opportunities around innovation for businesses. We need to know what successful networks, resources and physical spaces exist, what is missing and, crucially, what more can be done. 

The research is ongoing. Watch this space for the results and we would love business owners to get involved to drive this agenda in our county. 

FSB members, please contact me if you are interested in getting involved around this topic. 

Jennifer Thomas is the FSB’s development manager – Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland.

fsb.org.uk

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